blinovitch_lmt_doctor_who_databasefandomcom-20200215-history
The Empty Child (TV story)
The Empty Child 'is the ninth episode of the first series of ''Doctor Who. It was written by Steven Moffat and featured Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor and Billie Piper with Rose Tyler with John Barrowman as Jack Harkness. Overview To be added Synopsis London, 1941, at the height of the Blitz. The army guards a mysterious cylinder and homeless children, living on bombsites, are terrorised by an unearthly child. Rose meets the dashing Jack Harkness and wonders if she's met a hero even better than the Doctor. Plot In the vast blackness of space, a space metal cylinder rockets through the void with the TARDIS fast on it's tracks. Inside, the Doctor races around the console trying to keep track of it, having registered it as dangerous. While Rose ponders what it is, it starts jumping time tracks; the Doctor plots it's trajectory to London and hurries after it. The TARDIS lands in an alleyway and the pair of them go looking for it, the Doctor having deduced that they've probably arrived a month after it's crash. Unbeknownst to them, somebody watches the two of them from a nearby rooftop. Rose gets disappointed when the Doctor doesn't use technology to try and find it when she starts hearing a voice shouting 'mummy' close-by. Wandering around, she spots a child in a gas mask standing on the roof and rushes to help him. Inside, the Doctor wanders into a makeshift cabaret and takes the stage after the singer finishes her piece, asking the patrons if anything has recently fallen from the sky and everybody bursts into laughter. Suddenly a siren sounds and everybody leaves and the Doctor spots an air raid poster, revealing why he'd been seen as a laughing stock; he'd arrived during the London Blitz. Outside, Rose attempts to reach the child on the roof. Looking for a way up, a rope suddenly descends and she starts to climb it; the child points upwards towards a barrage balloon, which then moves away, taking Rose up into the sky in the middle of the air raid. The Doctor rushes outside to find her but only finds an alley cat. To his sudden surprise, the phone in the TARDIS door starts ringing. As he goes to investigate, a young woman appears in the alley and warns him not to answer it, but when he turns back, she's vanished. In spite of her warnings, he answers it and gets a child asking 'Are you my mummy?' to him repeatedly. Moving over to the house of a family huddling into their bomb shelter, the Doctor watches the girl sneak inside where she starts to gather up food. Still hanging in the sky, Rose struggles to avoid the letting go with the various explosions around her. From a terrace below, Rose's predicament is overseen by Captain Jack Harkness, using obviously anachronistic binoculars. After complimenting her buttocks, and that of another male soldier, he hurries off to meet her. Back in the house, the girl keeps gathering up food from around the kitchen when she stumbles across an already made meal and whistles for local urchins to come. Up in the sky, an explosion goes off under Rose just as she lets go on the rope. As she falls, she is caught in a blue tractor beam, activated by Jack, which holds her up. Sliding down the beam, Rose winds up in Jack's ship, but when she tries to stand, she faints. Meanwhile, more street urchins arrive at the house to eat; the girl, who the lads refer to as Nancy, starts dishing up when the Doctor suddenly appears at the table. After commending Nancy for her choice of action, the Doctor asks about the ringing phone and if anybody's seen Rose. Nancy doesn't answer and tries to get rid of him but he then asks if anybody has seen the cylinder he's looking for. Suddenly, the child from the rooftop knocks on the front door asking to be let in; Nancy flies into a panic and locks him out, to the Doctor's confusion. She gathers up the kids and ushers them out the back door to safety. The boy sticks his hand through the front door, but Nancy throws a vase at him and he retreats and various other things in the house start turning on. Terrified, Nancy flees and the Doctor speaks to the child, who continues to ask 'Are you my mummy?' repeatedly. The Doctor unlocks the door to let him in, but he's gone when he opens it. On Jack's ship, Rose wakes up and chats with him, clear to both of them that neither are contemporary to the time period. Thinking Rose to be a Time Agent, Jack deploys a swarm of nanogenes, microscopic robots to repair the rope burns of Rose's hands. Stepping onto the roof of the ship, to discuss 'business', Jack removes the cloak and reveals it's tethered to Big Ben. Elsewhere, Nancy hurries along a train track and hides a stache of food she took from the house when the Doctor, who had followed her, appears. Curious about the child that's chasing her and the other kids, the Doctor realises that Nancy knows about the thing he's looking for and asks her to take him to it, but she insists that he speak to 'the doctor' first. Jack and Rose continue to talk negotiations where he claims to have something of interest to the Time Agency, the cylinder the TARDIS had chased there. He reveals it's a fully-equipped Chula Warship that will be destroyed in two hours so decides to help Rose find the Doctor. Arriving outside the crash site, Nancy points him towards Albion Hospital where he'll find the answers he wants; as she leaves, the Doctor commends her again for helping the kids of London when she tells him she's thinking of it as her penance for the death of her little brother in a bombing. Heading into the hospital, the Doctor finds the ward completely full of people in gas masks. Wandering further, he finds another ward, just the same when he is interrupted by the arrival of Dr. Constantine. He tells him that the victims throughout the hospital all came after the crash. Scanning various patients, the Doctor finds that every victim has identical physical injuries. Constantine explains that the first victim was the child killed in the crash, when, over the course of a week, everybody became afflicted with the exact same injuries, like a plague. Soon, Constantine falls into a coughing fit and directs the Doctor to the room of the original crash victim but before he can tell him any more, he starts asking 'Are you my mummy?' and his face transforms horrifically into a gas mask. Rose and Jack soon arrive and address the Doctor as 'Mr. Spock', leaving him confused. Nancy returns to the house to collect more food when the radio starts up and the child wanders in. In a state of fear, Nancy hides under the table as he comes into the room. Jack scans the patients, shocked by the aftermath of the crash and admits that the Chula Warship is just space junk he threw at them to try and con them, before acknowledging they aren't Time Agents. The Doctor struggles to understand how human DNA is being rewritten into people with gas masks. Nancy knocks an apple of the table and the child goes to investigate. She tries to use this as a distraction to flee, but he turns and forces the door closed by just pointing at it. He starts to advance on Nancy, while she just calls him 'dead. In the ward, every patient starts rising and calling for their mummies, forcing Rose, Jack and the Doctor against the wall. Soon enough, the trio is encircled and trapped by gas-mask zombies all calling 'Mummy?'... Cast * Doctor Who - Christopher Eccleston * Rose Tyler - Billie Piper * Nightclub Singer - Kate Harvey * The Child - Albert Valentine * Nancy - Florence Hoath * Mrs Lloyd - Cheryl Fergison * Mr Lloyd - Damian Samuels * Jack Harkness - John Barrowman * Algy - Robert Hands * Jim - Joseph Tremain * Ernie - Jordan Murphy * Alf - Brandon Miller * Dr Constantine - Richard Wilson * Voice of The Empty Child - Noah Johnson * Computer Voice - Dian Perry Crew To be added References To be added Story Notes To be added Continuity To be added Home video and audio releases To be added External Links * Official ''The Empty Child'' page on '''Doctor Who Website